A revival of the Broadway stage version of Singin' in the Rain opened at the Trump late last spring. Its success led to a midsummer production of Footloose and the current run of Jekyll and Hyde through the end of October.

Meanwhile, Singin' in the Rain has moved to the new Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood through mid-November. Co-producers Al Parinello and Chris Giannini say they hope more will follow from their company, Jersey Shore Entertainment. They're enthusiastic about South Florida and seem confident the Hard Rock is committed to the musical theater format.

The Hard Rock's musical theater foray also is welcome at this end, given that our resident theaters are having a tough go of it lately. Only The Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables consistently builds successful first-rank musicals. The Shores Theatre shut down its resident company last fall, while the Broward Stage Door has cut back on its production budgets and remains on the ropes, financially and artistically.

The Coconut Grove Playhouse's only musical last season was a prepackaged revue. The Caldwell Theatre Company, Florida Stage, Cuillo Centre and newly reopened Maltz Jupiter Theatre mostly groom small and mid-scale revues, leaving the full-blown "book musicals" with a story, a chorus and scenery to the arts centers that bring in national tours.

The Hard Rock empire is more at home with rock 'n' roll acts and other arena events -- the resort is building a 5,600-seat arena along with a dozen nightclubs and other entertainment venues in a village similar to Disney World's Downtown Disney. Musical theater is a hot new trend in the casino world's entertainment portfolio, one that caters to an upscale, sometimes older market segment that the Seminole property considers an important part of its audience mix.

But the physical plant of the Hard Rock's theater hasn't been given the same level of attention and grooming that's evident in every other venue on the property. It's been called variously a multipurpose space and a temporary theater. Yet, although the resort employs one of the country's best-known theater designers in The Rockwell Group, no other performance space with real theatrical facilities is on the drawing boards.

The current theater, whose entrance is in the casino, is an oversized, spiritless, cube-shaped ballroom. Seating is padded folding chairs on collapsible portable risers. The stage is a few inches high, masked off with "blacks" (side curtains that hide a makeshift wing space). Lighting is attached to rock festival-style towers and booms of iron piping that frame the playing area.

There aren't enough rubes in the local audience to support six-week runs of theater in such a makeshift environment at any price. Given what's still available nearby despite recent cultural downturns, the Hard Rock needs to ante up more before declaring itself a serious player in the musical theater game. Let's hope it does. We need serious players.